Christians Arrested in Budapest for Trying to Help Jews Flee the Ghetto

A number of Christians were arrested in Budapest today on the charge of trying to assist Jews to flee the ghetto by supplying them with false identification documents, the Budapest radio reports.

The report revealed that 960 Christians in the city of Oradea-Mare, the capital of Transylvania, will be placed on trial “for accepting and hiding Jewish property.” The accused include many of the most prominent Christian families in the city.

The Nazi Transkontinent Press today reported the arrest of a prominent Jewish merchant in Budapest, who is accused of promising to pay 60,000 pengoes (approximately $12,000) to a railroad conductor to allow him to travel by train to a certain farm where, the authorities charge, the manager was ready to hide him for a remuneration of 30,000 pengoes (approximately $6,000). A raid on the house of the farm manager allegedly resulted in the discovery of valuables belonging to the Jewish merchant worth many hundreds of thousands of pengoes. The conductor and the farm manager have also been arrested, the report said.

Hungarian newspapers reaching here today report that the government commission dealing with Jewish affairs and with the administration of confiscated Jewish property is operating from a building of eighty rooms on Hooved Street in Budapest. More than 300 officials are employed by this commission.

In the county of Borosod, Jews are being used for agricultural labor in groups of 30 under military guard, the papers disclose. Alleging that the Jews desire to do this work, the governor of Borosod stated that “the Jews are now keen to dig, something which they previously abhorred, in the hope that they will thus escape confinement.

Slovakian newspapers received here call for cooperative ownership of confiscated Jewish property, “since few people are able, even with the help of large loans, to purchase such property.” Interest in Jewish real estate has decreased, “since it has been realized that confiscated houses cannot be obtained for nothing,” one paper says.